Protection from Retaliation

When a dietitian makes a mandatory report, there is some legal protection from retaliation. Unless acting in bad faith, the reporting dietitian cannot be successfully sued for making a mandatory report. Making a false report in order to get someone into trouble would be an illustration of bad faith. A dietitian making a report that later turns out to be groundless would still be protected if there was information to support the report, even though that information was incorrect. Some statutes provide additional protection as well. The Regulated Health Professions Act, for example, protects people who submit reports from retaliation in their employment or their contract to provide services.

Even where the criteria for making a mandatory report are not present, courts tend to offer similar protections for voluntary reports made to an appropriate authority in good faith. For instance, if you learned at a party about a health practitioner having sexual relations with a client, a report would not be. However, you might feel compelled to report the matter in order to protect the public, and could expect legal protection.